Citation

Li G, Ma J, Yang Z. Transp. Res. Rec. 2022; 2676(3): 258-275.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/03611981211051337

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A comprehensive analysis of the motivations, gap acceptance, duration, and speed adjustment of heavy vehicle lane changes (LC) is conducted in this paper. An rich data set containing 433 discretionary LC trajectories of heavy vehicles is used in this study and the data set is divided into two data sets based on the LC direction (LC to the left lane [LCLL] and LC to the right lane [LCRL]) for comparison. It is seen that LCLL and LCRL have significantly different motivations, which also results in different gap acceptance behavior. However, the LC direction does not significantly influence the LC duration. The navigation speed significantly influences the LC duration of heavy vehicles and the LC duration will decrease with the increase of speed, indicating the substantial impact of traffic conditions on LC duration. An obvious speed synchronization phenomenon is found in the process of LCLL, which is not the case in LCRL. The results of this study highlight the distinct characteristics of the LC of heavy vehicles and produce a better understanding of the lane-changing behaviors of heavy vehicles. The fitted distributions of LC duration and further investigation into gap acceptance behaviors may be used for microscopic traffic simulation and auto driving.

Language: en

Keywords

analysis; bicycles; data and data science; driver behavior; human factors; human factors of vehicles; lane changing; operations; pedestrians; statistical methods; traffic simulation